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2014.01.27 - New Horizons Part 3
X-Men: Dawn of a New Horizon Part 3 - "Timebomb" ---- Secret U.S.A.F. Base - Nevada Test and Training Range Also known as: 'Area 51' July 10th, 2014 Angel McGuire was taken from his home in Gotham City 48 hours ago. They kept him drugged until now, giving the 17 year old metahuman just enough stimulant to open his eyes. He finds himself strapped down to a chair, but the restraints were otherwise worthless. He wasn't able to move a muscle. Above him, Colonel Mark Albright observed the young man with a relatively emotionless look. He learned many years ago the dangers of emotion, especially in his business. The business of protecting American lives. This wasn't the first time he's stretched his morality for the greater good, and it wouldn't be his last. Colonel Albright approached the drugged teenager. He reached out to gently touch the boy's face, before placing a strong hand on his shoulder. "You're the magic piece of this puzzle, Mister McGuire. The piece we've been looking for." His eyes darted over toward a scientist standing nearby, his face masked and carrying some kind of dastardly device in his left hand. "Tag him." The device was pressed into Angel's neck. A hiss, followed by the sound of flesh and bone being broken preceding a thin line of blood pooling around a metal port now jutting out from the metahuman's neck. ---- New Horizons Mental Health Clinic Las Vegas, Nevada January 24th, 2014 03:40 hours Police sirens carry across the city that never sleeps. Here, on the outer edges of Las Vegas, the sirens are steadily closing in on the New Horizons Clinic, where the X-Men have just finished rescuing a sum total of fifty-seven metahumans, mostly mutants carrying the X-Gene. The metahuman refugees now stand outside the clinic. Almost every one of them are accompanied by duplicates of Jamie Madrox, a.k.a. Multiple Man, and those members of the X-Men who have aided in their rescue. However, deep within the clinic itself, a darker secret has been unlocked. Within a room with no security, previously impenetrable by the X-Men's telepathic members, were two prisoners. One, Angel McGuire, the other a naked man of African origin who's presence inside that room seemed utterly impossible. Attached to a device by a myriad of tubes and wires was a man matching the appearance of Kwabena Odame, a.k.a. Shift - the same X-Man who was supposedly infiltrating the residence of Congressman Ronald Stanberg alongside Marvel Girl. Opening the door exposed the X-Men to a vicious bubble in space-time, a phenomenon that both shut down the powers of their X-Genes while slowing time itself to a torturous crawl. Try as they might, even the nimble Psylocke was unable to stop Angel McGuire as he stood, ran across the room, snatched up two vials from the device holding Kwabena captive, and disappeared through a fold in time. The moment Angel disappeared, the bubble dissipated. Some of the X-Men found their powers returning at once; those with less experience utilizing them may find their return to be on something of a delay. However, this facsimile of Kwabena was captured, though clearly incapacitated by whatever device he'd been hooked up to. The X-Men comms were summarily blasted with messages from two different voices. The first, from that of Rokk Krinn: |"Cos to strike team. Shift and Marvel Girl presumed down. Their last location was at the address following. Take precautions against whatever might constitute a nasty surprise for X-Gene carriers; I'll be there in roughly the time it should take you to get there."| Coordinates were fed into the link, because that's how space Canadians from the future roll. |"I'm dropping the Colonel off in Washington DC, he's preparing a statement to the press on the crimes against the victims, and he'll be implicating his associates. The Congressman is still unaccounted for, as Shift and Marvel Girl were going to deal with him; they've been incommunicado for about three minutes. I really hope you guys are done in there."| The other voice came not over the X-Net itself, but rather, over a frequency the sophisticated communications network would pick up. It's a voice unfamiliar to anyone, save those who may have met him: the Dark Knight of Gotham City, Batman: |"Your other team just walked into a trap. I can help. But you need to seal off that field, /now/... before things get stranger."| The field has been sealed. The prisoners of New Horizons have been rescued. But little do the X-Men and their allies yet realize... Angel McGuire's disappearance into the past is a ticking timebomb just waiting to go off... ---- U.S. Route 95 Just Outside Las Vegas, Nevada A pair of blacked out SUV's, complete with body armor upgrades, are tearing down US Route 95, northbound out of Las Vegas. They left Congressman Stanberg's residence not more than a few minutes ago. He'd worked quickly after subduing Shift and Marvel Girl, but his enthusiasm over the successful testing of the Inhibition Pulse is suffocated by the fact that he just can't reach Colonel Albright at all. In the seat behind him is Shift. In the car behind his SUV, Marvel Girl. Both in costume, both de-masked, and both very heavily sedated. Congressman Stanberg has a Blackberry up to his ear while the driver, one of a handful of ex-military hirelings, speeds along the highway. "I don't know how the hell they found me! Two of 'em. Girl, redhead. Telepathic, I think, she was trying to force me to make a goddamned confession. But the other one -- Major, listen to me -- the other one, it's HIM. Mark Zero. -- Well, if it isn't him, it looks just like him! Black. Bald. I swear to God, it's him! Get everything you've got, if they've got friends out there, we're in big trouble!" Little does Stanberg know that Rachel and Kwabena were prepared for this. Subcutaneous tracking devices, triggered only by the sudden drop in a body's vital statistics... such as that caused by being knocked out by heavy sedatives. Where the Blackbird hovers over New Horizons, not too far from U.S. Route 95, their tracking beacons come alive upon one of the instrument panels. "Move." The moment the distortion bubble disperses, Monet St. Croix resumes action. There is so much to be done and now less time to do it in. She moves to the side of the perhaps-Kwabena, pushing if necessary. Her movements are precise and economical. She turns the man over, dismantling the tubes, and the machine, but only partially. She'll remove plating here, a tube there, and then abruptly stop her line of inquiry. The man buzzing on her radio does not bother her, not even enough for her to mute him. After moments, M looks over her shoulder. "This machine is recording genetic information and synthesizing a serum that interacts with the X-gene. It's been working for decades, maybe, which explains the presence of time manipulation. From the length of time and the sequencing patterns here, I have more than enough reason to assume it is a suppression agent." She stands and flicks her hair over her shoulder. "A 'mutant cure.' I'll let you think about the significance of those missing vials." Metropolis, NY The Daily Planet "PC Load Letter?" Clark Kent's eyes look pained and extra large behind a set of coke bottle glasses. "What the---" His jet black hair comes down over the tops of the glasses, hanging over in bad need of a cut. He reaches down to pull open the drawer. It was probably Lane. She never refills this darn thing. As he bends over, the thickness of his suit underneath presses against the bonds of his pants, splitting them at the behind. "Red? Really, Kent?" Steve Lombard is not amused and his look tells Clark so as he passes the doorway into the printer room. Clark sighs. He walks into so much of it on purpose, but with the kind of day he's having, both in and out of the cape, he could do without the little world he created for himself to be anonymous. *SLAM* The handle on the door comes off as Clark shuts it a little too hard. "Uhhhh. Perry?" he asks as he straightens and makes his way out to the bullpen. "Kent, get a load of this." Lombard seems to have forgotten about the pants splitting and now seems enthralled with the feed of the Las Vegas affiliate. Lombard loves trainwrecks. "Something to do with some clinic. I wonder what they're up to. What do you think, Clark? . . .Clark?" Losing her voice isn't as bad as it could be to Terry - Theresa Cassidy, that is, code named Siryn at least for the moment - but it was still a profound disorientation; a sort of phantom amputation of some unnameable part of 'her'. She would stagger, if it wouldn't validate that woman already dashing into the machines. As M X-posits, Terry breathes deep, trying to force herself to think. Ugh, she thinks to herself: Pretend you're Uncle, what would you do with a mutant cure? Sell it, she thinks. Possibly. Kind of pedestrian. If you could do all of THIS you don't need money so bad. Use it to kill all mutants. Dismayingly likely, she reasons further, having attended her Mutant Studies electives at Chas' school like everyone else. Use it to kill... SOME mutants, she thinks further. Who are the most likely targets? The X-Men, obviously, she thinks with furrowed brows, but this was all military, so - "I think I know where they're going," she says, a little froggily. "Or at least where they're going t' send it." As soon as Monet finishes talking, there's a potentially unsettling few moments where for 200 feet, no sound is heard at all -- the reason doesn't require a guess, as Dazzler has her arms raised and fists clenched in concentration while she gives herself as much of an instant recharge as she can manage. Then Terry says something, which Ali doesn't quite catch - it's M she's focused on. And the machine. The horrible machine. "Is it safe to destroy it, do you think? We really shouldn't leave it functional." Dazzler asks with a fist still clenched, light flickering around it - obviously she'd like to do a little venting as well. Rendering Nate powerless hits him harder than the typical mutant. His powers are pretty much permanently activated and requiring constant reign to keep under control. The quietness, the lack of energy and the blinding of his psychic perceptions made him stumble and fall to a knee. But when Angel McGuire vanishes, all comes back like an electrical shock. For a second, before he can bring his mind shields back in, he touches every mind in a hundred miles. Sleepers all over Nevada wake up startled, while many awake normals can snatch snippets of memories and dreams from others. Nate hisses, bringing his unruly powers back under control. Then stands, reaching with his mind across the city. "Rachel... she is unconscious. We need to get to her now!" Up in The Blackbird... Waiting. Reserve. Laura Kinney understands it. In theory. But she does not have to like it. After all, her training, up until she ended up at the school anyways, was all about being in the field. And doing whatever needed to be done. And doing it alone. And yet, as a certain panel comes alive with information some of her training, her post-joining the Institute training, prompts her to look at the screen, and then to try and transmit a simple message over the X-com. |"Shift and Marvel Girls trackers have activated. The Blackbird has their signals."| It's convenient when the timespace anomaly simply and abruptly dissipates below the circling batwing. Moments ago, the Dark Knight felt what it was like, trapped within that eternal, uncomfortable bullet time. More, he felt a sense of lost time-- or distorted time-- as he escaped its influence. Convenient indeed; almost too convenient to be anything but a more terrible complication in a too-complicated conspiracy. As the Congressman yaps away on his smartphone, the kidnapped X-Men aren't the only ones being tracked. The Caped Crusader listens intently even as he sends up alerts to the Justice League and his own network, bringing that sleek jetcraft low and hovering momentarily over the facility he so recently abandoned long enough to rappel down and retrieve the bound doctor and his chief bodyguard. Batman then promptly gags the men, tethers them together, and stows them like so much luggage. |"Huntress."| Batman doesn't wait for her to acknowledge, just for the batsuit to assure him the channel is open, and the transmission is through. |"Confirm two hostages with the congressman. A redhead, and a bald african-american. Both metahuman. He's calling in the everything his conspirator's have, expect heavy resistance. I need you to interdict and delay them while our own reinforcements are en route."| It's a tall order, particularly given she's the only Bat or Bird currently monitoring the Congressman from a makeshift listening post hidden in the desert a few miles from his own mansion. As if he can predict the snark -that- suggestion is going to cause, the Dark Knight interjects after a beat, |"East wing."| As if by magic (but in fact by button press from the batwing as it ascends anew), the desert bunker's dead space illuminates with concealed lighting, and a door that looked long-sealed whines and slides open with a whoosh, revealing a vehicle bay converted to a very specific collection of hardware. In this case, armed and powering up are a trio of blue-black, armored two-wheelers that might have once been superbikes of the highest pedigree; ie, similar to what Helena is used to riding. Then, said motorcycles have been armored in aerodynamic panels, and outfitted with god-knows-what in terms of unconventional, concealed weaponry. Two of the dark bikes blink to life, bluish LEDs on their fore illuminating as the garage doors open to the dunes and the freeway beyond, tires squealing as they tear off. The last? She idles, waiting for Huntress. She'll have to ride hard to catch the rest of her 'team', but somehow the Batman doesn't expect that to give her a problem. Psylocke stands aside while Monet handles their possible teammate; she seems to have things under control, and it gives her plenty of time in which to--stare--really intently at Kwabena(?), mostly. Waves of violet telekinetic force briefly innundate the air around he and M, but she still can't seem to see inside of his head--or anyone else's. When Monet begins explaining the purpose of the machinery, she begrudgingly slides her eyes to the younger mutant. "We'll--have to see if Cerebro can locate him, ASAP," she murmurs. "And one of you--" She glances towards Theresa's croak, but turns her attention back to Monet - and from there, to Nate - and finishes, "--will need to check him." She tips her chin towards Kwabena(?), then makes a sharp turn towards Theresa. "The floor is open--whatever ideas you've got, I'm sure that we could use them." So Jamie got the people outside, and well he did it all by himself! Of course when one is the Multiple Man it is amazing the things one can do when they are all by themselves. So he escorted the people outside and is trying to group them all together. "Okay now everyone stay calm, I just need a moment to figure out what to do." Hey Jamie has lotsa options he just can't pick one, cause that's a problem of his. He has gathered all of the mutants he freed in one area, but well maybe that isn't the smartest thing in the world. Stuck parked in a listening post. Humiliating. Huntress would have flatly told the Bat 'no', but she knows how well THAT would have gone over. So, she's been stuck here listening to bullshit for what feels like EONS. But then... god. She should have known. |On my way.| She managed to NOT sound too terribly pissed off over the recent situation. She'll bitch and moan about it later. For now, she finally has SOMETHING to do. Abandoning her listening post, she turns and runs at a full sprint in the direction indicated in the Bat's transmission, passing through the now-open door just in time to see the other two (unpiloted?) motorcycles disappear. She claims the last one that is clearly waiting for her and tears out. She'll figure out the controls and extra bells and whistles along the way. Amist the group of rescued mutants, a pale skinned girl is only partially visible. Transparent as a projection on a sheet of glass, she floats a few inches above the ground looking around like a trapped animal. Time and again her gaze shoots to the guardian that escorted her out. Picked her up when she fell... until finally she was able to float again. Now however... she thinks is the time to slip away. For now, she just tries to quietly give her guardian the slip, drifting away at a light strolling speed when he isn't looking. Finally she was intangible again... rubbing the wierd... wierd thing on her neck. She pauses a few feet away though.. and for the first timelooks around. W-where... where was she? This.. wasn't familiar.... not at all! Menwhile, at Stark Tower... Tony is in his armory, working on refining a slight energy bleed issue found in the flight stabilizers. "Let's see here, adjust the conduit by point-two micrometers.." JARVIS interrupts him, mid-thought, "Sir, I hate to interrupt, but I'm picking up a transmission from DELPHI. It appears that our friends in Gotham are in Las Vegas, and they're assisting some metahumans being perused by a motorcade" The display split-screens to show live feed fro a drone following the Congressmen's motorcade..though Tony doesn't know that's what that is. "Using the Mark Forty configured with weaponry from Marks Seven and Fifteen, you can be there within four minutes of forty-seven seconds at mach 2.5" Tony puts down the precision equipment and nods, "Prep it. Leave Pepper a note I've gone to Vegas to do some gambling." "Of course, Sir." One minute, twenty seconds later a sonic boom can be heard over lower Manhattan as Iron Man goes supersonic. Flight ring comm: totally different channel from Every Other Comm Out There. It's also the one that Rokk Krinn, as he rockets through the air in that fuzzy space between the upper and lower atmosphere of the Earth, is using to brief Booster Gold on the situation. "--so the quicker you can get there, the better. That kid Angel -- with the time vortex power? He got yanked away from us by court order before you got out of Mojoworld, so you never had a chance to, you know, look at what he does -- he's how I even found out about this going down. Big enough group of people at that site that they've probably got all the abductees handled, but it might be a good idea to swing by there, first -- feeding the coordinates into your ring's beacon now. And, coming up on Nevada. See you there." "Oh boy. Yeah, I remember you mentioning this," Booster Gold replies, via his own flight ring. He is also speaking in Interlac, because this is one of the few times he gets the chance to do so. He is in mid-air as well, flying towards the West Coast, and he has Skeets clutched under one arm as if the little robot were a football. "I really hate this," opines Skeets. Ignoring him, Booster adds over the ring communicator, "I want to get a scan of the area anyway, in case it's causing any chronal anomolies. I hope we don't get met with a hostile response on approach, getting shot at is annoying." Now that he has the detailed coordinates, he redoubles his flight speed and arrows towards the Nevada site. ---- Chicago, Illinois June 6th, 1944 Creating tears in the space-time continuum were Angel McGuire's gift. A very raw, untrained gift. For the past six months, he's been a lab rat under the heartless watch of Colonel Albright, Doctor Amel, and the others. Being freed from their clutches, however, reveals a different kind of terror. It was morning, just before dawn. His eyes drifted up from the newspaper he'd gathered, revealing that he'd landed through time on D-Day. The mouth of the alley he found himself in dumped out into downtown Chicago, already bustling with morning activity. He stepped out into the sidewalk, just so, the newspaper and vials clutched close to his person. For the past six months, he's been tortured, drugged, and brainwashed. His mind is an echo of commands, two of them quite simple: commands he was to follow should his room ever be breached by unfamiliar faces. PROTECT THE CURE. BRING DISTRACTION. Anxiety and adrenaline shot through his veins as if his heart were a cannon. His brown eyes darted from the left to the right, and like a caged animal, he became terrified. Fight, or flight. Too many people. Protect the cure. Bring distraction. Angel's eyes turned black, and he let out a terrible scream of fury. A wrinkle in time, much larger than what brought him here, formed across an entire block of downtown Chicago, drawing every living thing with it to another place... ---- Las Vegas, Nevada And surrounding areas January 24th, 2014 For those X-Men who's mutant powers did not immediately come back online, the return of their powers is more gradual, but it is certainly happening. The absence of Angel McGuire and the time-bubble he created seems to have released that inhibiting effect. Meanwhile, the panel Laura observes aboard the Blackbird begins indicating numerous other objects joining the general vicinity of Rachel and Shift's tracking devices. Two, then three, then four and five blips appear. Three of them are listed as flying objects, the other two ground objects. They are all coming from northwest of the Las Vegas area, and as more blips appear on the scanner, it would seem that the reinforcements aren't about to stop coming. As Psylocke's powers come back online, she'll be able to catch a glimpse of Kwabena(?)'s psyche. The man looks like Shift, he even carries Kwabena's psyche, but this is NOT the Kwabena Odame the X-Men know. He's older, and his history is remarkably different, his memories not at all similar to Kwabena's, at some point branching off from his (their?) childhood in Ghana. However, the facsimile doesn't feel like a different person, a clone or a brother. They feel like the same person, with different histories. Meanwhile, Congressman Stanberg's motorcade is growing larger. Now outside of Las Vegas on Route 95, the motorcade is joined by a trio of Marine Corps helicopters, which swoop into an escort position. About a mile up the road, a handful of vehicles are speeding toward a rendezvous point; two jeeps, three SUV's, all loaded down with U.S soldiers. And far overhead, two F-15's go zooming past, their pilots keeping an eye to the ground for any would-be interlopers. It would seem that, regardless of how immoral and potentially illegal the actions taking place at New Horizons may have been, the conspiracy spreads deep into the United States Armed Forces. "I would not care," M replies, regarding destroying the machine. "I have already committed it to memory." She frowns with faint displeasure. "Others, however, may wish to examine it and confirm my findings." Nate's thoughts ping off of Monet's considerable mental shields. She stares at him at the moment of contact, however. That took effort. "It would be best for me to apply myself to this problem in a scientific capacity." M crosses her arms. The Kwabena clone, along with the partially-dismantled machine, float up beside her. "I will return to the Institute and begin developing a counter-serum. I will require a volunteer to aid me in testing and development." "That is," she finishes, sending the clone and machine telekinetically drifting out the door, "if you agree that this is the best course of action, Psylocke." Miles and miles of land pass under him as Superman flies towards the west. Cape and hair billow backwards as he goes faster and faster. Even so, his mind wanders. The man from Africa had told him he was on to something. How big, or how detailed, Superman wasn't sure. Kwabena Odame never called, and in truth neither of them probably thought he would when the offer was made. Nevertheless, whatever was happening was spilling out into the open. Kwabena helped him in a time of need. Maybe the Man of Steel could do the same thing. The overlay in his communicators gives him access to the government and the Justice League. The ring on his hand gives him access to Legion. As he travels he lets both of the latter organizations know he's coming, but the confusing part is the first group. What did the government have to do with this? And why? Superman puts in an urgent call, trying to reach General Ross to see what in the world is going on. In the distance he can see the jets fly by and the motorcade making his way. Slowly he descends from the clouds like an approaching angel, still awaiting Ross. Surely the front of the motorcade will see him approaching. "I am going to get my sister back," states Nate, "Shift too," as an afterthought. To his credit he gives about five seconds to Psylocke to give him a good reason not to do it. None? He takes off, crashing through walls and floors to get outside the most expedite way, then quickly accelerates to hypersonic. He is homing in Rachel's mind, but since Laura mentioned something about trackers, he contacts the young woman. He didn't even know she was out there until now. Makes sense to leave someone in the Blackbird as reserve, though. |"Laura. Where are they exactly? Are they moving?"| Terry takes another deep breath, and continues. "If they aren't trying to wipe out mutantkind, which of course is a possibility, they're probably using this t' fuck with, begging your pardon for language, some of us. The most organized groups I can think of are, ourselves," she makes a twirly finger gesture to include the X-persons present, "OR, Genosha." Dramatic pause, one beat. M speaks. Terry's arms fold, which is a bit difficult with the patagia business underneath the upper sleeves. "Hmf," she says. "Right," she says, with a sudden decisive statement. To Psylocke, she explains her thinking: "If y've got to chase someone I'd drag you down, and it sounds as if you do." She is, after all, limited to the speed of sound. This is not, of course, in any way a cover for envy. Alison is very useful at wrecking things, but she's also sensible - studying things is also generally a good idea. "Well, there's only two people her best suited for guinea pigs. You can take a Jamie, or you can take me. He can make more of him, and if your cure kills me it won't be permanent." Which may be the first time Dazzler has mentioned this to X-Men out loud. She's not around much. "But yeah, what M said, Psylocke. You're the boss on this jaunt." Ali holds out her hands at her sides - indicating she doesn't much care which way Betsy decides. "..." As Laura watches that screen, she tries not to let even the slightest hint of emotion cross her face. Not even as she moves towards the pilots seat and prepares to try and engage the autopilot in a way that it'll land the Blackbird. |"North. Route 95."| is transmitted as she responds to Nate's question, and then she actually does frown. |"And they are not alone. Multiple contacts closing on them. Escort formation. Multiple in the air, and on the ground. Possibly military."| |"If we are going to go after them, we move /NOW/."| Of course since she's just reserve, she doesn't take try to have the Blackbird take off, and waits for orders. The drone cycles ahead of Huntress are used as mobile signal boosters, allowing the Dark Knight to quickly create a false emergency; the road may not be closed, but news outlets and detour signs certainly think it is, steering traffic away from the stretch of freeway now occupied by a growing military presence. The Bat's own transmission comes across those allied comms he's been able to detect, in each locality. |"Growing military presence around the congressman and his hostages. Unknown level of complicity amongst responding agents: exercise discretion."| Yes, they're bringing in jets, armored vehicles, and automatic rifles in the hands of professional soldiers-- and Batman's saying 'be gentle'. He knows who he's talking to. Crossing the freeway at an overpass just behind the convoy as it's joined by two humvees and a large helicopter serving as a minigun platform, the first of the drone cycles drops into the road amidst them and broadcasts a message regarding international law and the Justice League: just before the soldiers open fire. In the blink of an eye, and the application of very fine ceramic brakes, that armored bike all but stops on a dime, flashes of light pulsing to either side as dual railguns obliterate the wheelbase of two heavily armored humvees, before the all-terrain batcycle ramps the side of the highway and drops back off to the flanks, its partner-- and Batman-- as yet unrevealed. "That wasn't what I--" Psylocke lets spill before stopping herself and choking down her protest while squinting at Monet. After taking a moment to exhale and pinch the bridge of her nose, she makes shooing motions towards Theresa and M while muttering, "Yes--of course. Fine; go on. The rest of us will rescue--" Her eyes twitch towards Nate, and then to Ali as she confirms, "--yes. Let's just have X-23--" Before she can finish her thought, the young ominpath is gone, leaving her to stare tensely at the ceiling in case of debris. With a bare scowl, she looks back down at Alison and tightly finishes, "--pick us up," before briskly turning to make her way from the room, and eventually the facility. |"X-23,"| she transmits along the way, |"M and Siryn can fly themselves back to the Institute to carry on the scientific end of things; Scion is already en route to Route 95. Dazzler and I are going to need a ride there; be ready for us."| Huntress pushes the engine of this insane motorcycle to the redline before shifting gears, hoping it'll be enough for her to catch up with the other pair of 'bikers' that went ahead. Now this is one nifty little whistle she'd like for her Ducati: the little display on this bike's small windshield highlights objects ahead of her, including civilian cars, the other bikes she's chasing, and, tiny but there, a red dot indicating her target. Along with more red dots which are presumably the Congressman's backup. Okay, this doesn't look like a cakewalk anymore. Now she's glad that she at least bothered to load her crossbow with steel quarrels. Upon hearing the followup transmission from the Bat, she grimaces to herself and mutters, "Yeah, yeah." Of course, does she remember if her comm unit would pick that up? Taking a split second to look another neat little toy on this bike, she pushes a bit more acceleration out of the engine then tries her hand at stopping the hum-vee looking trucks that are between her and the Congressman. Shorting out elctronics is 'more gentle' than blowing out tires, right? Right? It takes someone barreling past her at suddenly supersonic speeds to shake her out of that startled stupor, staring over the Las Vegas skyline. She was starting to hyperventalate a little, and she didn't even need to breathe! A quick glance at the duplicate distractedly giving orders to the mass group of mutants and she fades completely from sight, gliding back towards the clinic. That place... she shudders just getting this near to it. Sticking her head through a wall, she sees the group of heroes inside making preparations, but pulling it back out.. she sees the Blackbird. A smile crosses her unseen face as she drifts nearer to it. "Oh yes... I think I've found the express route out." Running a hand gently over the hull, she takes one last look around, and slowly drifts inside, hiding for now under the main floor and biding her time. Tony knows how to get the best out of his equipment.. Las Vegas, four minutes, forty seconds after Tony took off from Stark Tower in lower Manhattan... "Sir," JARVIS intones over the sounds of The Donnas (Don't judge), "Now enter Las Vegas airspace. The feed from the drone is still live in the hud and it appears tht Superman is on scene to lend assistance." The AI brings up another display within the hud, a sweep with quite a number of blips on it. "There also seems to be an increasing number of military assets coverging on this point." "Noted, JARVIS. Keep an eye on 'em. If they get froggy..we'll leap." he says as he starts to descend, "Hey, there's Superman. Let's pick there. We can say hi. Also.." he keys up the commlink supplied to him via DELPHI en route, "Gotham, Avengers on scene, prepared to assist." Iron Man, in what appears to be a new armor with a slick looking Black/Red colorscheme, descends from the southwestern skies and lands gracefully in a three-point next to Superman, Helmet turning in the Man of Steel's direction, it inclines in a nod. "Superman. Good to see ya, it's been a while." he turns towards the advancing motorcade, and raises both arms, one palm repulsor charging, two compliements of mini-missiles popping up from the shoulders, and a curious looking, cannon like device rising from the left forearm. Judging if the motorcade even tries to stop, the helmeted head cants to one side, "Really?" he asks, like this is even an option, keeping an eye on the sky with the advancing jets and the like. More Interlac, this time from Rokk to Superman, as the Braalian man swings low to the ground to avoid being spotted by the convoy. |"Hey, Kal. Can you tell me which car, or cars, our people are in?"| He asks the question even as he takes a low road parallel to the highway, watching the line of cars and SUVs with his magnetic senses. |"These vehicles give off so much electromagnetic pollution it's kind of hard to pinpoint their specific signatures. I imagine you're planning on talking with the Congressman and his people-- you won't be able to do it for long. There are a lot of angry people headed this way. You can tell them truthfully that Colonel Albright sold them out and this whole thing's going to be all over the media by lunchtime in DC."| Krinn opens up his ring-comm's frequency to include Booster again. His voice is almost cheerful. |"Booster: I'm going to be concentrating on the weaponry. I'd just EMP, but-- planes. And sprock, probably the Batplane at this rate. If everything's okay with the other site, then when you get here, we're probably going to need to worry about keeping our crowd from slamming the military too hard. We've got the paperwork sorted, but we'll have a lot less of a leg to stand on in court if anyone ends up dead."| "Uh... yeah, this looks like a real... situation," Booster Gold remarks via his flight ring as he soars in. However, there are several heroes in the area that he knows and trusts, he can keep his first priority as data-gathering. Releasing Skeets, now that they no longer need to rely on Booster's top-speed flight, Booster hovers and turns in place as he and Skeets scan the area. Some of this is straightforward, simple audio and visual stuff, but the reason he is here is to check for anomalous chronal signatures. Freezing in place, Booster stares downwards and a faint glow flickers around his eyes. "Uh..." and then he is talking into his flight ring communicator as well as his Avengers comm, and the general band he uses through his suit. This communique goes out in English. "There is something incoming, I think we're about to have a massive temporal breach of some sort." ---- Rome 117 A.D. The Forum of Gerasha. A bright and sunny day at the height of the Roman Empire. Sitting just next to communal centre, a massive barracks where thousands of Roman soldiers called home. They were setting out on a long campaign into the northern reaches of Gaul, when a rip in space-time brought an entire city block of 20th century Chicagoans onto its doorstep. It only took a matter of minutes for pandemonium to break out. The 20th century and the Roman Empire don't exactly mix too well, and caught up in the center of it all? One 17 year old metahuman, Angel McGuire. Another rip in space time formed, only this one was larger still... ---- Moscow, Russia November 19th, 1956 It's only been a day since Nikita Khrushchev uttered the famous words, "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you." A rip in space-time opened near Red Square, disgorging a hundred confused 20th century Chicagoans, some thousand Roman soldiers and interloping citizens, and one rabid and out of control Angel McGuire. The 17 year old boy, wild with lust for power, driven only by the echoing words of his former captors, stood unnoticed as the fighting unfolded. It only took a few minutes for the Russians to roll out their tanks, for the airplanes to join the fray. He looked to the sky, offering a prayer to the Gods of Mayhem in the form of a furious scream, and a much larger rip in space-time appeared... Disgorging the mass of Chicagoans, Romans, and now Russians, right on top of U.S. Route 95. ---- U.S. Route 95 Just North of Las Vegas January 14th, 2014 Batman's first drone cycle blows out the tires of one humvee, while Huntress shorts out another, sending it sprawling toward the side of the road harmlessly, only to disgorge its soldiers. Amidst the steadily growing motorcade converging to protect Stanberg's motorcade, there is a sudden distortion that casts across the landscape of the Nevada wilderness. Space seems to fold, as if every onlooker's eyeballs were being poked by an unknown hand. When it's finished, the Chicagoans, the Roman armies, and the Russian armies (tanks and all) are suddenly just... there. Spread across the road and the terrain beyond. Cars screech to a halt. Chicagoans run amok, disoriented and angry. Russian tanks begin rotating their guns. The Roman soldiers follow a battle cry let loose by their commanders, and charge toward the otherworldy, godlike creatures of metal they do not recognize. Russian Tanks and airplanes open fire... ...and Angel McGuire is nowhere to be seen. General Ross gets on the comm to Superman. "Sir, I don't know what is going on," he explains. "I'm trying to reach Colonel Mark Albright, he's in charge of Area... of... he's assigned to that region, and I... wait a moment. Stand by." The comm goes silent, then, "Albright? What in the name of... Oh my GOD!! Get the joint chiefs, go to DEFCON 3!" The Blackbird is landed, ready to pick up Alison and Psylocke. As soon as they are on board (plus one invisible Phantasma), the autopilot is cued in and sends the jet blasting toward the rendezvous point at U.S. Route 33. The scanners are blinded by the sudden activity, and as soon as the X-Men on board are able to get secure, its engines cycle up and flatten them to their seats with a sudden burst of inertia. With Psylocke's blessing, Monet evacuates the building as well. She elects to walk to the exit rather than fly through the ceiling. This affords her a chance to glance Theresa up and down as she passes. "Needles are involved and I am assigned the screamer. C'est fantastique. Come with me." She does not maintain a telepathic connection on the flight back to the Institute. "Tony," Superman says, giving him a grim nod. "Wish it were under better terms." Superman puts his lips towards his ring as he begins responding to Rokk. "The Congressman is in the first car, while the one behind has a handful of armed guards. There is one hostage in each car." Superman's eyes grow as he sees Shift, or at least someone who looks a lot like him asleep in the back seat. Almost imperceptibly, Superman's toe begins to dig in the dirt as a sprinter might as he gets ready. It looks like he might make a run for it; a run to try and save Kwabena and Rachel in one fell swoop. "Temporal Breach?" Superman mouths, unsure of what Booster means, but it's enough to prevent him from rushing in. And suddenly everything happens in front of them. Romans, Russians, and folks from Chicago are everywhere. When one scared tank from the Red Army fires a pair of blasts into the air, Superman has to put his plans on the back burner. He reaches out, as the rest of the world slows down to almost a standstill, and catches the shells as they were about to bury themselves into the Roman army. In a flash, Superman is back at the tank, smashing his hand down into the engine block and yanking it out, electric components and all. Theresa follows after Monet St. Croix, if not entirely eagerly. As she's eyeballed, she frowns slightly. "Aye, well, I /can/ shut up, unlike some people," she mutters, not very energetically. She's not looking forward to being jabbed, but such is the life of costumed adventure. Nate arrives like a comet, flying too low to register in the radar of the planes, too quick for the helicopters to intercept. He slows down very suddenly about twenty yards from the SUVs. On the periphery of his perception he registers someone is attacking the escort vehicles and reports to Laura, but the truth he is mostly concerned about the SUVs. He 'grabs' them with his telekinesis, forcing them a few feet over the road. Then tears them apart. Metal and glass and plastic disintegrating into bits and fragments and exploding outwards. Leaving only the people inside floating in the air. |"There..."| he states, projecting loudly into the mind of the congressmen and his bodyguards. But his thoughts get interrupted by the temporal breach that brings in all those Chicagoans, Russians, Romans and tanks! There is a very WTF moment there and Nate almost drops all the people he has floating. And then he drops them anyway. Except for Rachel and Shift. He drags them closer and forms a telekinetic bubble around them and himself. A dense bubble, tank-proof. |"HOLY CRAP!"| That is sent to the other X-Men. Followed by some other colorful expletives. No, Laura does /NOT/ stay in the pilots seat once the others are onboard. Instead, she lets someone else take the controls. Or engage the auto-pilot.Instead, she slides over to the next seat, and well... They take off. Fast. And lands near the chaos as well... All hell, or at least multiple time periods, break loose! But /ANYWAYS/... As the Blackbird starts to pass over the chaos, a door opens. If anyone tries to tell Laura to stay here this time, they'll get a claw waved at them, before the 'clone' leaps out, into the chaos below. Where does she fall? Smack dab in the center of the Romans. Now think about this. The 'Greatest Military Force in The Universe' (or so the 11th Doctor claimed) versus the 'Perfect Killing Machine'. This is gonna be a violent and bloody fight! Especially as the clawed girl cuts loose with claws, martial arts and the like, while the Romans around her swarm on her with military precision backed up by a lot of experience! The second drone batcycle appears ahead of the convoy, skidding out onto the highway beyond the point where Superman and Iron Man bear witness to the unfolding mayhem. Sensors track the temporal rift(s).. then the conglomerate of forces from the corners of time and the globe. High above the chaos, and most of the other aerotech in play, the Dark Knight calmly steadies himself and taps in a series of commands: both motorcycles revv below, and targetting computers suddenly get a dramatic priority boost. Gyroscopic stabilizers help the assault craft weave between rockets and tank rounds, railguns targetting treads and turrets, applying singular, precise shots to the rather colorful disabling of both in a shrapnel of tank bits. The first bike skids between two other tanks and (coincidentally?) provides cover to a fleeing group of civilians, while the other weaves through the gunfire of the planes above in the moments it takes a little spherical drone to intersect, spraying corrosive, sticky, very very opaque fluid at the canopies of the anachronistic fightercraft. Blink and you'll miss it, in a flash from on high, the batwing descends all but vertically, spiralling about an invisible axis and launching its payload of heavy ordinance; in this instance, the Dark Knight was outfitted for motorcade interdiction. Fortuitously, it's close enough to what he needs. The 'missiles' launched by the batwing are actually half a dozen reinforced barricades that bury themselves in the ground on impact firmly enough to impede even the passage of tanks. In theory: it's one of those unusual things he hasn't had to field test. The rather high-tech stanchions are deployed in triads on either end of the road, seeking to cordon off the conflict. Onboard sensors quickly flag the hostile parties whether they're waving gladius or Mosin-Nagan... Gotham is a strange place, okay? Those flagged hostile are targetted by bolts of energy that could taze an elephant, and peppered with tranquilizing darts designed for crowd suppression. Close enough, indeed. The batwing ascends nearly as quickly as it dropped, sharply outmaneuvering even the Fighting Falcon that banks to track its egress. Well Jamie decides to huddle some of the dupes together to form a plan of attack. So yeah they actually do a football huddle together. "So well what do we do guys?" Jamie prime says to the dupes that he gathered, there are only 4 of them that he decided to bring into the brain trust. "Leave them, it's not like they have a lot to look forward to. They're mutants after all, it sucks being a mutant." Well that one is just meet with a stare from the Prime and the other dupes in the huddle. "You just shut up from now on." Prime says to that one, "Any more ideas that doesn't involve leaving them?" After a minute or so another dupe speaks up, "Well we could take them to the authorities. Sure they can help, right?" There is a pause, "Okay we'll do that one. Now we just need to find some and see what we can do. Once that is broken up the dupes go back to the scared people that they freed, "Okay we're going to see what we can do to get you out of here. But we need you all to stay together and stay with us, okay?" Well when the people nod at that, Jamie and the dupes head out to try and get them some help. Of course there are also armies all around them of course. So what does Jamie do, well he circles the people that were freed with his dupes. Just doing the circle the wagons thing with them, making sure they are all safe. Huntress can't help but grin to herself when one humvee actually goes kablooey (in her mind) at whatever her motorcycle just shot at it and the other gets stopped by something (someone?) else. She's totally okay with just blasting right past the vehicle now shedding soldiers like ants out of a stomped anthill and actually does so -- her goal is the SUVs with the Congressman that the Bat pointed out in the first place -- but then she learns the hard way exactly how good this motorcycle's breaks are, nearly standing the thing up on its front wheel when effing ROMAN LEGIONNAIRES appear in her path. "What the ever-loving f..." |Uh, Houston, I think we have a problem here.| Of course, she's still close enough for those soldiers to try firing at her, and she recovers from being gobsmacked quickly enough to send them to cover behind their dead humvee by snapping off a quarrel at one of them and bouncing it off the man's helmet. That was a warning, Jarhead, you won't get another. Shrilling out a whistle that would be heard over a SuperBowl audience to get the attention of the Romans, she calls out as loudly as she can in Latin (and probably sounds overly formal about it), "Legionnaires! Heed me! I am... uh... an Oracle of the goddess Diana!" She holds her crossbow aloft to hopefully help with that image. And, under her breath she mutters for her comm unit, |For the love of God, someone get that bitch with the claws to leave the Romans alone. I think I can handle them.| Betsy slides right into position when Laura vacates the captain's chair; overseeing the flight is a moderate, if not especially engrossing distraction from the oppressive silence of not being privy to her teammates' thoughts, and the familiar, bewildering man who M and Siryn brought back to the Institute. Where their students are. After swallowing, the British woman studies the instrument panel intently, and even flicks a few switches--all of which amounts to little more than unnecessary micro-adjustments to the Blackbird's breakneck jaunt. It's almost a relief when the craft begins to slow to a more reasonable speed, because at that point, she's able to unbuckle and pace towards one of the plane's side doors, right behind Laura; far from telling her teammate to stay back, she wordlessly waits for the clone to leap into the madness. And then, after tossing a parachute to Dazzler, she jumps out after X-23. Unlike the clone, she's on a collision course with a Russian batallion, a protective telekinetic shell gleaming in the air around her. As the tanks come into view, she draws in a deep breath, reaches for the katana on her back, and clutches the hilt tightly; her course begins to shift so that she'll land on one of the armoured vehicles, rather than among the troops, as she originally might have. The sword is smoothly drawn in the moments before impact, blade crackling with another layer of psychic force; if her calculations are correct, she should wind up landing somewhere between the freshly separated halves of the thing when it's all said and done. She's angling to cripple the vehicle and spare the driver - with any luck, he should be left hanging out of the open side of the thing. At which point she'll knock him out with a stiff blow from the hilt of her katana before leaping free of the wreckage to engage the rest of the batallion. |"Psylocke, X-23, and Dazzler are in the field--"| she transmits while pressing through gunfire from behind the safety of her TK field, |"--and I need identification on these men I'm moments away from brutalizing!"| Pandemonium rips across the field as the forces clash. One of the tanks rolls up, its turret swinging to meet the barrage of resistance facing it... when all of a sudden it stops dead. Gunshots can be heard from inside the shell, followed by screaming. It isn't long before it's crew throw open the hatches and run screaming from the tank as though they had seen a ghost! Now THIS is more like it! After all that time being poked.. prodded... it felt good to really terrify someone. And as a bonus... Phantasma now had a tank! How hard could it be to drive one anyway? The turret starts to spin around in slow circles and the tank shudders to life, beginning to roll aimlessly through the German lines. From time to time, a mad, gleeful cackling can be heard from in side moments before the cannon fires aimlessly at its former comrades. It moves like it was possessed! Iron Man blinks, "Wait, did he just say Temporal Breach?" "Sir, I'm detecting Russians from the Korean War era, a Roman Legion Phalanx, and some rather confused Chiagoans. Is there an attempt being made to confuse my sensor systems?" Tony sighs, "No, JARVIS, we're dealing with metahumans here - the regular rules don't apply. Okay, Let's cover the civvies, and keep the Russians from filling them full of lead. Keep an eye on the Romans and fire up the knockout rounds" Iron Man launches off not far behind Superman, and lands between the Chicagoans and the roadside. Turning to the confused civilans, his digitized voice projecting over the crowd and chaotic din, "EVERYONE! GET BACK AND GET DOWN!" - offensive measures still out, he keeps an eye on anyone trying to mess with the Average Joes. Tony just watched Superman do what Superman does, and seconds later saw Batman drop out of nowhere in the Batwing and bring his A-Game, and the other heroes that have, pardon the term, assembled, and not one of them is a slouch. Tony keeps an eye on the civilians, between them and the Romans. "Holy shit it does NOT suck to have this job right now." Iron Man says, "and one of the unofficial themes for this scene: https://soundcloud.com/watertowermusic/everything-is-awesome-tegan/s-J7fYt" "Oh, grife," Rokk says under his breath at Booster's warning, over comm, of a temporal distortion-- and then absolutely all hell breaks loose. For a half second, the Legionnaire allows himself the luxury of a Picard facepalm, but then there's already weapons-drawing and shouting and the reports of weaponry and clanging and people charging in. So he lifts into the air, quite visible, and does a quick survey of the various groups, their positions, their relative dependence on technology, and their-- ... Romans. There's no time for staring, but there's definitely no chance an EMP is going to help with crowd control, here. So he brings his ring up again and adjusts the broadcast to feed back and amplify, and then spreads his arms out to his sides: he's above the chaos, below the Blackbird, the F-15s, the Batplane, the helicopters. He slams downward, magnetically, shoving everything even containing ferromagnetic components toward the ground. It's like really specific heightened gravity, almost. It's really insistent. And then Cos' pleasant, vaguely Vancouveresque voice is loud and clear: |"Shut up, and SIT DOWN."| Then he pauses and adds, probably unnecessarily, |"State! Vilite! Audite Dianae oraculo!"| And then Cos realizes Iron Man is down there, and kind of grimaces. Whoops. Iron Man blinks, and has a Sin City moment, "And everything was going so well.." And then Tony Stark is looking up at the sky in a dead suit. A really dead suit. "Well, shit." Tony says, to no one in particular at all. "Oh -man-." Booster Gold still has his comms open, so this mutter comes through as he flies down towards the action. He does not have communicator contact with everyone on the scene, unfortunately, so he ends up cupping his hands around his mouth as he shouts, "Try not to kill anyone! The less you affect them, the less impact it has on this time stream and we might not have to worry about chronal-fractal splintering--oh gosh." This is probably not the time, ha ha, to try to explain temporal mechanics. Unfortunately for Booster, he flies into range of Rokk's smackdown. The Man of Gold is saying through all of his comm channels, "Hold on, we're getting temporal disturbances again, there are rifts opening behind--" And then he gets magnetically swatted to the ground, which leaves a minor Booster-shaped crater. Skeets ends up going 'smat' right by his head, half buried in the sandy soil. Huntress yelps in surprise as her crossbow suddenly feels like it becomes about a hundred pounds and yanks itself toward the ground so aggressively she has to let go of it or risk getting her shoulder dislocated. Her quivers likewise try to drag her to the ground, and the borrowed motorcycle protests vehemently. Even as the pandemonium erupts, more tears in space-time begin erupting all over the place. Through one appears a mass of Nazi soldiers, their hands raised in salute to a Fuhrer who isn't there. It only takes a few moments for them to realize that they are very much out of place. This is not Berlin! Through another tear in space comes a terrifying sight... dinosaurs. Raging, giant dinosaurs that look about for a few moments, before unleashing their roars of fury. Somewhere amidst the growing chaos, a single airplane appears very high in the dark sky, well above the rest of the fighters and helicopters over Route 95. Painted upon its hull are the words: 'Enola Gay'. Its pilot gets on the radio, his instruments blinded by the temporal disturbance. "Control, control! This is Tibbets. My instruments are blind. I can't see a thing! Control, come in, control!" The co-pilot shakes his head. "Colonel, everything's dead. We're flying blind up here! Kirk, you got a bead on our location?" "We should be right on target!" Captain Lewis and Colonel Tibbet look at each other. It's one of those looks that every military pilot knows. Lewis nods his head, and Tibbet gets on the comm to the bombadier. "Major Ferebee, we're a go." And with that... Little Boy is dropped high above the scene below. Meanwhile... Shift and Rachel are safely in Nate's telekinetic bubble, while Superman makes quick work of tank ordnance and a tank itself. Weapon X-23 launches herself into the midst of the Romans, which serves to draw a lot of attention her way, while the rest of them rush upon the mass of Russians, turning U.S. Route 95 into a generational melee of sword and machine gun. Batman's barricades serve to keep the fighting from expanding beyond its initial scope. However, it's Huntress' cry that gathers the attention of a few Roman commanders, who approach her and speak in a more dialect-ridden Latin. "'Lo, woman! We do not know this goddess Diana! If you are the Oracle, then tell us, quickly; do you come heralding the rule of Caesar, or do you not? Answer at once!" Betsy severs a Russian tank while managing to spare the lives of its occupants. A gunner in the back comes out with battle-hardened eyes, and begins shouting at her in Russian. "Identify yourself!" He reaches for a sidearm, but hesitates, his eyes growing wide at the pandemonium all about. "What is going on here??" Phantasma's commandeering of the Russian tank is certainly drawing attention from the Nazi's! Many of them wield their sidearms and begin firing, bullets denting the tank but the Ghost Girl is certainly safe inside for now. The rest of the Nazi's? Well, they're a bit slow on the cuff without their Fuhrer to guide them, but soon enough, their bullets are joining the mayhem. Iron Man's arrival seems to settle the frightened Chicagoans down. Recognizing that he's there to protect them, they draw closer. One of them can be heard crying out, "The war! The war has come to the states! The Nazi's have come!" Under the command of Rokk Krinn, everything metallic on the ground level is suddenly held in place. Tanks grind to a halt, Romans go down with their armor and swords, and weapons of metal drop to the ground. This action brings about a sudden pause to the mayhem, and a relative silence falls over everything. Certainly enough time for someone to realize that a nuclear bomb is falling high from overhead. Certainly enough time for someone to notice what Booster had noticed. Whatever rift opened to bring these masses here, it's opening again. The air just behind every force twists and distorts, like looking through a heathaze. Beyond, one can see the places where they all came from. If the forces can be pushed back, or instructed to go back... this might be over. Back at the New Horizons Clinic, Jamie's dupes who are protecting the rescued prisoners are soon met with a handful of first responders. The police officers are as confused as anyone, getting reports from the county sheriff bands on what is happening north of the city. As such, they do form a barricade, guns drawn, while a couple of them approach the mass of dupes. "Whoa..." says one officer, while another says, "What the hell. Clones?" The first walks up toward one of the Jamies, asking, "Sir, what's going on here? Who are these people?" "Great Scott!" Superman's eyes go telescopic, and once he reads the side of the airplane, he knows precisely what's about to happen. As bad as things are all around him, there's one situation that takes precedence. The Man of Steel casts the casts away a pair of tank wheels that go skittering across the rocky ground and leans low. With a powerful leap, backed by all the force he can muster, he shoots upwards, attempting to intercept the nuclear bomb before it gets to the detonation point, presumably above the battle. He shoots upwards, faster and faster, but slows down abruptly as he approaches Little Boy. Blasting into it, would be no good at all. He wraps his arms around it and digs his fingers into the hull after checking to ensure the move would not set the bomb off or breach dangerous parts of its interior. From there, he flies straight upwards, towards space, as fast as he can. Ali catches the parachute and follows - but she doesn't NEED no stinkin' parachute! With the roar of the wind around her creating a steady source of sound, there's more than enough 'juice' to give her the power to glide downwards - she actually ANGLES herself for someone inexplicably falling through a tear in the sky to attach the parachute to *HIM* then tears off in another direction to shoot LASERS at DINOSAURS from above! "GOOOO HOOOME!" Dazzler shouts, firing off photokinetic bolts and bright blasts of light to drive dinosaurs back towards their portal of origin! Strangely enough, as the romans rush Laura... As she fights.... She holds back. Oh she uses her claws. Hand and foot, and slices through swords and shields. She cuts arms a bit. And stabs legs. Enough to cause soldiers to fall and be unable to fight. But she does /NOT/ kill. Or at least she was trying /NOT/ to kill. But then... MAGNETISM! Her wrists and feat yank her towards the ground. She was trying to do a spinning kick, with her foot claws dealing with three romans and their shields, while she slashes with her hands to deal with some others. But part way through... She falls flat on her back. And can't get up. She tries. She fights it to get up. But she's more or less pinned. Some of the Romans nearby probably end up trapped as well. But others, well... They probably could let go of their swords and shields, and remove their armor. thus even as she lies there, fighting to get up, the clawed clone more than likely ends up be swarmed by now unarmed Romans... Batman's voice crackles over many comms once more, |"The rifts in time and space seem to be cascading. If we're lucky, it works both ways."| The Bat's observation may be rather elementary... because dinosaurs and nazis.. but still. |"Superman has the bomb contained."| The blue-and-red streak just accelerated past the batwing a moment ago: and that means the rest of them can push the invaders back. The next, the Bat puts on an encrypted, private band, straight to the orbital station far overhead. |"Transmitting sensor telemetry to Watchtower control. Run comparative amplitudes against scenario 347-c on all orbital countermeasures; tell me we can shut that rift down if it -does- keep growing."| It's not so much a request, as a demand to find a way. Worst case scenario? ... well: An odd module affixed to the Dark Knight's utility belt is activated as the jetcraft is brought in low once more, sweeping the perimeter like a gunship to apply rockets of acrid gas to any who manage to flee the field, forcing them back in towards containment... and the rifts in time; perhaps reality itself. The confused gunner sheds some light on things; he'll still end up getting knocked unconscious, thanks to the sidearm, but the language - and a careful look at uniform - are enough to tell her that he is probably not US military personnel--and Booster's warning just seals the suspicion. Not to mention informing the way that she sets about subduing his friends: aside from when she's forced to disarm a soldier, she sticks to carefully placed kicks and palm strikes intended to drive them towards the rifts. She is mid-follow through after cutting the barrel from a Russian rifle when Rokk decides to take the broad approach to settling matters on the ground; the weapon snaps out of her hands, and thanks to the psychic energies still clinging to it, it winds up buried all the way up to the guard. If that were all the metal she had on her, the force of being disarmed so would probably have thrown her balance off for a few moments as the inertia of it twisted her body unexpectedly. It isn't, though, so instead, she's jerked down by the sword still hanging from her hip with a clipped cry of, "Bloody--" before she hits the ground. In order to free herself, she has to rely on a combination of carefully applied telekinesis and entirely undignified wriggling; it's a struggle, but given a few seconds to carry it out, she should be able to retake her feet. Of course, given a few seconds, whatever Russian soldiers are left very well might be able to regroup--and given that her telekinesis is so thoroughly occupied, her shields are very visibly down. If any of them get close, they'll get nasty kicks in the legs, or worse; otherwise, though, the best she can do is keep an eye out for them. It takes a second for Huntress to recover from the surprise of the Roman commanders not recognizing the name Diana. Well, wing it, H. Don't prove to everyone that you're the dingbat they think you are. Again in overly formal Latin, "Yes. Yes, I herald the rule of the Caesar. Now quickly, form up your ranks and prepare to defend yourselves but do not reciprocate! There are innocents on the battlefield." Maybe it's a good thing that H is so busy trying to get the Romans into some semblance of order. If she'd noticed what Superman was dealing with, all bets would have been off and she'd have told the Bat right then and there exactly what she thought of 'his way' of doing things. The tank grinds to a halt, trying to push through the heavy stall and failing hard. A mournful groan comes from inside. Phanta's gonna need another way to amuse herself now. Thats when she sees it. A... a tear in the sky... theground.. leading to somewhere... somewhen... wierd. Looking around, as though for the first time now, transperant, the ghost girl hovers inches above the tank, a little awestruck. Honestly, with the high she got from joyriding in a tank fading, the battlefield was alot more impressive. She sees efforts to push back each group to their individual rift, but its hard for her to get past the 'looking into another time' thing. At least... until she realises she's facing a field of antiquated loot. A smile spreads across her face as she brushes a stray bang from her eyes, slowly fading completely from view. Well... you guys did get me out of that... place. I guess I can try to lend a hand. A horrible, spine chilling wailing starts to echo through the otherwise quiet battlefield. The sort of thing that catches your attention no matter how far you hear it from. A deathly chill sweeps over the Nazi and Russian forces both, while the feelings of deathly cold hands grope, prod and pilfer from the mass of soldiers. Her expert fingers pluck small, easily missed trinkets here and there. A war medal, a wallet, letters to loved ones. Things likely to be found on a dying soldiers body and never recovered. Things history can miss...or so she thinks. Each one is slipped into her backpack, usually followed by blowing chill air into someones ear, wailing over their heads or warning them away in a hissing whisper, all unlike her actual voice. As she passes through people, she feels like ice water. As her hands roam, they leave behind a clammy, deathly chill. She focuses on people near the front, trying to scare them back. Iron Man is alerted by Jarvis to the exponential temporal chaos that ensues, and Tony sighs. Another. Bomb. "Okay, JARVIS, we know what to do with these, activate tha Gemini configuration and let's take it outta town." "Sir..there is a slight problem." the AI states, even as those outside see the armor shift. Plates extend, bulk up, and the suit grows about a foot in each dimension. The faceplate swaps out and becomes something more akin to an astronaut faceplate, complete with reflective surfacing. "The Magnetic pull of the Earth has increased over six hundred percent in the last three seconds. We are literally unable to pull off the ground for launch. I'm afraid for the moment, the field has us pinned and completely immobilized." Tony sighs, "We can't move?" even as he asks, he tries, attempting to raise an arm, a leg, anything. "No sir, we can't." "Well, shit." "My words precisely, sir." Although he is face down on--and slightly in--the ground, Booster Gold is still getting some data input. Through his communicators, slightly muffled, he says, "Superman, don't let that bomb detonate... try to make sure it gets back on board before the aircraft is returned to its correct era. The time-line can soak up small changes and hiccoughs, but the big stuff is going to form new branches. And there's always a chance those branches can come back into -this- time-line and alter it." After a pause, he says, "Skeets?" "Yes, sir," Skeets says, also slightly muffled, since he is also 'face' down in the dirt with only his finned back end showing. "I know this is awkward, but can you do any holo-projections?" After a pause, Skeets admits, "Not in this position, no. Sorry, sir." "Nevermind, we'll just have to hope." Booster returns to speaking via his communicators. "Try to encourage or just push everything back through their appropriate portals. And please be careful with this so we don't end up with... you know, with Nazi Dinosaurs or whatever." Rifts! Great. Fairly certain, at this point, that this isn't going to end in tears if he lets everyone go, Rokk Krinn discontinues his AoE. Ring still amplifying his voice, he calls out in English, |"If you can see home, go there! Translate for your neighbors, please! If you're looking for something to fight, there's a bunch of dinosaurs over there to punch!"| He's like this close to adding 'and Nazis!' but even he can't countenance the potential results of such a statement. Or even hint at anything like 'double points for punching a Nazi riding a dinosaur'. Thankfully, as he flies higher to get a fresh read on the locations of everything, he switches his comm back to just Booster. |"How do we close these things? Is there anything I can do to help you? ...Booster?"| Oh. He's talking from in the ground. ...whoops. |"Sprock, sorry! Are you okay? Nevermind! Just-- just tell me what to do and I'll do it."| Jamie Prime confers with the police officers, explaining everything that has happened. It seems the police are more than willing to take the refugees under protective custody, especially considering the potential that they were held illegally. The original reason for the X-Men coming here has been handled... those victims are going to be safe. The X-Men couldn't have known the fire their presence would ignite, nor could they understand how deep the rabbit hole went. Fortunately, Nate has Shift and Rachel under his protection, and manages to get them back to the Blackbird safely. Dazzler comes onto the scene, and uses her power to flash things before the eyes of those dinosaurs they've never seen before. The beasts stampede a fearsome retreat, and as they pass through the portal that opened behind them, they are gone before they could injure anyone. |Reading sensor telemetry,| comes a response on Batman's comms from Watchtower. A moment later: |These rifts are unstable. We're not reading any residual tachyon activity, but the heavy electromagnetic activity is keeping them open. Conclusion: Metahuman activity on the other side of these portals. They're collapsing, fast.| With Little Boy in his clutches, Superman rockets far into space. If there is to be a nuclear explosion, it likely won't be happening close to Planet Earth. He also won't have the chance to return Little Boy to its rightful place, for mere moments after he departs, the Enola Gay shimmers out of existence through one of the collapsing portals. Meanwhile, the Batwing sprays its acrid gas, forcing those nearest the portals to retreat unaware into the periods from whence they came. There might be some bleedover... a Russian here ending up in Berlin, a Nazi ending up in Rome... but that's collateral damage. Laura might have been swarmed by the Romans, but... word is quickly filing through their ranks. The Oracle of Diana has spoken, do not reciprocate, defend yourselves only! The commander, having disseminated his orders, turns back toward Huntress. "Now then, Oracle of Diana. This is not Rome, this is not the road to Gaul! We must complete our conquest of the northern regions. Direct us, and we shall follow. Nam Caesar!" "NAM CAESAR!" The call goes out. Looks like the Romans have chosen a new commander. The Russians seem to be the least likely to settle down. They're used to the cold brutality of their commanders, not to mention the cold temperatures of their country. Those closest to Psylocke engage in fisticuffs, while others leap from their tanks and seek to muster themselves. They might be the ones who could spark a new fire from the embers brought by Rokk Krinn. But then... The ghastly wail of Phantasma begins to echo throughout the battlefield. Those near the front are definitely spooked, and begin pushing their way back from the front lines. Within a short few moments, Russian, Roman, and German alike are heading for the hills, almost every single one of them, scared out of their minds. Only a handful of stragglers remain. A few displaced soldiers from very different periods of time remain, alongside a few dozen Chicagoans displaced from their 1944 Windy City. It's not perfect, but it could have been a whole lot worse. One displaced Chicagoan walks up to Iron Man and pokes him in the faceplate. "Son, you alright in there?" The portals shudder and fade, leaving the Nevada desert as it once was. However, a shadow of their existence exists in the scientific plane, a small remnant of instability between time and space that needs to be sealed. Everyone will begin to feel a slight **tug**, something annoying at first, but it grows in intensity. Those without super strength or the means to affix themselves to something will soon feel their feet being drug across the ground toward the empty air where those portals shimmered. "No. . .can. . .do. . .Booster.. ." Superman continues to climb. His brilliant memory calls back to his 7th grade history class and the report he did on Hiroshima for Mrs. Sanders' class. The fuse begins when the device is dropped out the port on the plane. "No. . .time. . ." Superman continues to climb upwards and upwards as he reaches the outer stretches of the atmosphere. The further he gets from the Earth's surface, the easier it becomes to get away. He increases speed, more and more, trying to put as much distance between as possible. He never notices the disappearing plane. As the mental timer begins to make its way towards zero, Superman squares up and shows the stars the form he used to have as the best Quarterback who never got to play for Smallville High School. In a mighty heave that would leave a hundred Brett Favre's crying for mercy, he chucks the device even deeper into space; so hard it leaves even his amazing sight. And BOOM, the dinosaurs are gone before she even hits the *ground!* Dazzler shouts, "AWWW, YEAH!" as she swoop-dives to pick up some lift and thrust, and shoots herself over towards Booster - since someone is talking to Tony already. The Rock Star offers the Time Jockey a hand, "C'mon, Jon Carter, what on Earth would they say on Barsoom if we just left you here in the mud? They'd NEVER let me play Helium!" And as the romans get off of Laura... As the move away... And as they 'Hail Ceaser'... Laura climbs up onto her feat. And lets out an inhuman snarl. To be honest, she looks pissed. But she heard what was said, so she doesn't press her attack. Instead, she speaks into her X-com and asks a single question. |"Did we recover Shift and Marvel Girl?"| A few numbers are punched into an illuminated keypad as the batwing completes its circuit and climbs, never in one place for long enough to draw sustained, competent fire from the enemy aircraft not yet caught up in the backlash. Even with the forces coming through stymied, the residual energy threatens to tear an ew portal... god knows where. |"Confirmed, Watchtower. It's spiking again now. We should be able to use an oppositional electrostatic pulse to dissipate that energy, breaking down the connection between timelines. Clear the reactor floor, I'm going to need a lot of juice."| Klaxons sound on the reactor levels of the orbital sentinel far overhead, unheard on Earth save for that they portend: the ion generator at the station's nadir crackles to life as Batman transmits a series of complex codes, instructions, and security confirmations directly to the device's core. |"Anyone vulnerable to electromagnetic discharge needs to be clear of the temporal anomaly -now-."| Polite of him to let them know. It's not but a few moments later, there's a tremendous sound, as if all the air in the sky were being sucked into a tremendous void, and the night is lit by a second, white-silver moon. It flares blue as it descends, cracking with arcs of electric discharge, dark clouds over the desert striating wildly outwards in an expanding pulse as they're parted by that blinding burst of energy, perfectly attuned to the detected emissions of the mutant-conjured rifts. A clash of lights spreads from the collision of the ion burst, a domino effect cast in brilliant fireworks that chain outwards; with luck, destabilizing the stragglers. Let's face it, even a fifth of a Russian tank batallion angrily loitering outside Las Vegas is probably not hitting under par. |"I thought that I saw them on the Scion Express--"| Psylocke tightly transmits as she stands and immediately twists into a sharp blow to the side of a particularly zealous soldier's neck, |"--but things have been a touch hectic out here--I can't be certain!"| She flicks her hand towards the sword lying on the ground, and to her pleasant surprise, it glides into her hand without interference; with an identical gesture, she brings the ground-embedded katana to herself too, then sheathes them as she advances on the Russians--who turn and run after just a few steps from her. If it weren't for the accompanying wail, she might use the unexpected reprieve to bask in self-satisfaction; instead, she brings her hand around to hover a couple inches off from her hip-mounted blade. Just in case. That hand drops to briefly, instinctively clutch the hilt when the tugging starts, but it quickly joins her other one in pressing against a temple as violet wings flare to frame her scowling features. A wave of telekinetic energy rushes into the world from the air before her, stopping just a few feet ahead where it pushes vigorously against the force drawing her towards the rift zone. Her stance is rather low - the shift from unsteady shuffling to psychically imposed stability left her with awkwardly bent knees - but as long as she's clear of whatever the mysterious voice on her communicator has in store, she isn't particularly concerned. Until it turns out that that 'something' is 'a goddamn laser from the goddamn sky'; that is something of a cause for concern. Given that its owner seems to be on she and her team's side today, though, she tries to push those concerns aside, for now. Huntress looks at the various portals and thinks she picks out the correct one. "There," she tells the commanders in Latin as she points to the hopefully correct portal. "I see the road to Gaul there. If your legions make haste, you can still complete your task. Go! Now!" She watches to make sure the Romans all return through their portal, then tries to pick her crossbow up again. Is it finally not acting like it's suddenly the little stabby sibling of Mjolnir? And of course, THAT is when that ridiculously bright light happens. She's OF COURSE caught completely by surprise because the Bat was just EVER so thoughtful and gave people a whopping second and a half to react. And the resulting disorientation puts her within just a few feet from the Iron Man still lying there like a die cast figurine stuck to a huge magnet. The uniformed cap of a russian officer slips from his head as he flees, moving freely in the air as though set upon an invisible head. Phantasma slowly fades back into sight as she adjusts her new cap, wearing not the asylum like jumpsuit her captors had kept her in, but Russian Issue combat fatigues and boots with a white tank top and a backpack of loot. Most of it, honestly, was a little to large for her and was unprofessionally baggy, but it beat whatever those freaks that were torturing her had her in. Light debris and a gust of wind doesn't even seem to touch her as she walks soundlessly towards, honestly, wherever really looked most quiet. She's had her fun, but now she had a moral question to answer. Did she hang around? She didn't exactly haveID or anything... should she runoff? She had no idea where she was... not that it probably mattered. Then she idally rubbed the mark on her neck and shuddered. Withthings calming down, she starts to get anxious again, fading to about 50 transperancy and glancing nervously about the aftermath. Honestly, at this point, she'd likely show up more clearly as a cold spot on thermals than she does visible. "The magnetic force is dropping, calculating thrust to compensate to find a convergence point for launch." a momentary pause from the AI. "Calculated. Fuel mix optimzed, Gemini launch in 3..2..1.." *Cue the Morgan Freeman voiceover* In years to come, there will an asterix in books on planetary science, herpetology, and the study of the Jurassic period. *cut back to reality* "Wait, JARVIS, I don't think--" and Tony says, and has about enough time to fire the directional thrusters that are now in his palms, where the repulsors used to be. *Cut back to Morgan Freeman* It won't be discovered for several dozen years by "normal" expditions, however. Iron Man, in the revolutionary Gemini suit configuration, launches at three times the speed of the launch of the Space Shuttle. His directional thrusters take him vertically. Pro Wrestling fans will call it "The Moment" for decades. The day when Iron Man speared a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And kept going. The thrust and correctional flight surfaces correctly engaged, and took Tony and the T-Rex up. For a moment, perhaps even The Last Son Of Krypton, returning the Enola Gay on her grisly mission may say he was there, and stared in awe at the sight. Iron Man kept going, and damned if he didn't go straight up, and out. JARVIS made course corrections, but by the time the windows were calculated, it was too late. *Cutscene to Iron Man escaping the atmosphere as a crackling white/blue beam of energy shooting past him and striking the surface of the Earth.* Tony's reflector kicks in and keeps from blinding him. "JARVIS - WHAT THE SHIT WAS THAT?!?" "Sir, I assure you I don't know. But it /was/ scientific in nature." *Continue Morgan's voiceover* Iron Man kept going. And going. And going. They say he was going at least 50,000 MPH when he broke orbit. The suit, remarkably, to Tony's credit, held up. He didn't stop, until he impacted. A quarter of the mile into the soft surface of the Moon. The Day Iron Man Body Slammed a Tyrannosaurus Rex into the Moon. There were inquiries, inquests, and panels. But ultimately, Tony was found innocent of wrongdoing. Though science will not acknowledge the body of the dinosaur that rests now deep on the Moon's Sea of Fecundity. *Cut to the Moon, realtime. Tony slowly hovers out of the crater he's just created, and down at the body of the dinosaur that now rests there. "JARVIS," Tony says, "Let's start reworking the armor composites to be magnetic and EMP resistant, okay?" "Yes, sir. Commencing alloy combinations now. Oh, and Batman would like a word with you upon your return." *Cut back to Morgan Freeman* "I'm Morgan Freeman, and this is Through The Wormhole." Fin. "" Booster Gold is speaking in Interlac again, although he is still on all of his communicators. It has been a stressful time. He gets to his hands and knees and extracts Skeets from the ground, dusting off the little robot before letting him float free. He then accepts the hand up from Dazzler, smirking at her. "-Thanks-", he says, in English again. Despite being half buried in the ground, he does not seem to be dusty; force fields are handy. "I'm sure they--oh crap." Portal vortex. He is already grabbing Dazzler around her waist with one arm, and snatching Skeets from the air as he gets pulled backwards. Booster is flying away from the pull of the unstable portals when Batman's orbital strike lands, and he is saying, "Iron Man, we need--" and then Iron Man is gone. Really, really gone. Booster is just boggling, and then he is flinging his other arm around Huntress' waist so he can fly the two women away from the area. "Iron Man?" He repeats, in a tone that is more than a little uncertain. Unfortunately, the transmission time from the Earth to the Moon has a fair delay. As Rokk begins to realize part of what level of mess he may have at least partially been responsible for, and events conspire to make it look, to the woefully underinformed observer, like people are doing what he told them to do... ...Batman calls an orbital strike from space. Cos grips the sides of his head and promptly falls to one knee, trying every fancy alien technique and a few old Earth standbys to keep from throwing up in his transuit. "" he says faintly, "" ---- Berlin, Germany June 6th, 1944 "Herr Fuhrer." A Nazi Commander throws his hand into the air in a salute. Behind him, another soldier comes along, dragging a person by the scruff of his neck. "Wir haben jemanden gefunden. Hier, in Ihrem Fuhrerbunker." Adolf Hitler looks up from his desk, where a trio of maps are spread out. He glowers at the Commandant, then looks toward the ragged figure of Angel McGuire. It seems, in the heroes attempts to thwart his time portals, the 17 year old metahuman burned himself out. Hitler rose from his desk, walking around until he could face the boy. The officer dropped Angel to his knees, and found the hilt of Hitler's ceremonial rod upon his shoulder, with a swastika facing his chin. "Wer sind Sie?" Hitler leaned closer. "Wo kommen Sie her?" Angel looked up at the man he knew from history, and scowled. He did not answer. Abruptly, Hitler reached into the young man's jacket and withdrew two items. Two vials... one a dark green, the other bearing blood. "Holen Sie mich Doktor Mengele! JETZT!" X-Men: Dawn of a New Horizon The End... ... for now! Category:Log